L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

“Don’t humor me, Saryn.”

“I already asked, politely…Ryba.”

The iron in Ryba’s voice began to soften as she spoke. “The more bodies that are crammed into Westwind, the harder it is for me to sort out what I truly see from what I worry about. I find that in the quiet and the cold amid the ice, matters become clearer.”

Are matters ever really that clear? Or are they just clear for you?

“You will find, in your own time, Saryn, that clarity of vision and purpose are everything. You cannot be distracted by what might be, or what might have been. There is only what was, is, and will be. All the rest are either wistful thoughts or useless nightmares.” Ryba smiled, an expression filled with a mix of emotions that Saryn wasn’t certain she wanted to know. “That doesn’t mean you won’t have both, in great measure. You just have to learn to know what they are and set them aside. One of the great weaknesses of most men is that they fail to recognize early enough which dreams are possible and will become real, and which are vain hopes.”

“Was the engineer that way?” Saryn kept her voice low.

Ryba looked hard at Saryn before her expression changed to one more amused and enigmatic. “The engineer was the kind of man who is the most dangerous. Upon occasion, he could turn unreality of the most impossible kind into hard accomplished fact, but he never understood the longer-term implications of each of those transformations.”

“The longer-term implications?” prodded Saryn gently. “Doesn’t every action have a consequence? Why would there be greater implications from a set of acts that appear at first sight to be less probable to result in success?”

Ryba laughed. “You’ve seen it, and you don’t understand? How likely was it that a single engineer who barely understood the natural laws that enable magery on this world and a singer could destroy the mightiest power on the continent of Candar?”

“Rather unlikely, but they did,” Saryn pointed out.

“Precisely. And what has happened as a result?”

“Lornth is weaker, but it remains independent.”

Ryba smiled coldly. “Had Cyador taken even the southern half of Lornth and held it, Lornth would have been forced to accept a position as a vassal state to Cyador, and Suthya would not even be attempting designs on Lornth. In turn, Arthanos would not even be considering moving a force into the Westhorns. By accomplishing the improbable and what was considered impossible, the engineer created a set of circumstances that actually weakened Westwind.”

“Weakened us? We would have had Cyador as a neighbor.”

“Had Cyador taken Lornth, that would have returned the empire to its largest historical territorial borders. Cyador could not have afforded to expand any more, certainly not in the next century. Westwind would not have been seen as a danger, but as a buffer, a small land that neither Gallos nor Cyador would have wished the other to have, but which neither really would have wanted. In turn, that stability would have blocked the Suthyan expansion into Rulyarth and kept the Suthyans at bay, and we would have been free to trade with all three. Cyador would not have cared if women fled to us because it would have made Lornth more stable. Karthanos and his son would not have been able to complain if discontented women left their land for Westwind.”

“So you’re saying, by destroying Cyador, Nylan threatened the survival of Westwind?”

“He increased the level of that threat. That much is certain.” After a pause, Ryba added, “That is why I struggle to see what will be, because the ripples in reality created by his acts distort what will now occur.”

Saryn certainly hadn’t thought in those terms, but she’d seen enough of what Ryba had foreseen to know that the Marshal was no mystic and, in some way Saryn did not pretend to understand, could see pieces of a future that was unknowable to anyone else, at least so far as Saryn could determine. “What do we do now, then?”

“What we must, you and I together, and you and I separately.” Ryba cleared her throat. “We have at most four eightdays…”

Saryn listened intently, trying not to be distracted by all the implications of what Ryba had said earlier.

Saryn completed all the tasks and planning Ryba had requested, from assigning duties to various detachments to planning the logistics of transporting the various devices and explosives. Before dawn on fiveday, she and Ryba and second company’s third squad were riding eastward along one of the approach routes to Westwind.

Ryba seemed disinclined to talk, and Saryn wasn’t about to initiate either questions or conversation when the Marshal was so self-absorbed. While Ryba had been somewhat distant as a ship commander, over the years at Westwind she’d become even more self-contained. Not exactly withdrawn, because she trained with the guards and ate with everyone else, but there was definitely a space between her and others, even when she was in the middle of a group.

Midmorning came-and went-before Ryba spoke. “This is still the way they’ll come.”

Saryn had her own idea as to why the Gallosians would take the road that Ryba and Saryn followed, the most northerly route out of Gallos toward Lornth. There were no truly narrow passes all the way to Westwind, although there was one valley surrounded by rocky cliffs, but the cliffs were a good half kay from the road. “Even though it’s the most obvious, ser?”

“Obvious or not, after all we’ve done to harass them, they won’t take a road where easy ambushes are possible. That’s one reason why I ordered the attacks.”

“So that they’d take the most open road?” On the face of it, that made no sense.

“The road that seems the most open. Appearances aren’t always what they look to be.”

Saryn could understand that, even if she didn’t recall why that would be so on the route they were traveling.

Not until late afternoon did they reach the west end of a comparatively shallow valley running generally east to west, whose northern side was comprised of rocky hills that footed taller and snowcapped peaks and whose southern side largely comprised a long mesa with sheer cliffs overlooking the valley. As Saryn recalled, the valley extended almost eight kays, and at the eastern end, which she could not see, was a slightly deeper bowl-like depression, to the east of which was a moderately good-sized stream.

Ryba reined up at the top of the pass, just before the road began a straight and gentle descent. She studied the entire valley, then she nodded to the squad leader. “Forward.”

Halfway down the incline, nearly a kay farther along, the Marshal again halted and surveyed the valley, particularly the cliffs to her right, the ones buttressing the rocky mesa. To Saryn, it was obvious that the Marshal was comparing something she had seen-or foreseen-to what she was now seeing, measuring everything with her eyes. The Marshal gestured for Saryn to ease her mount closer.

Saryn did so, reining up when she was almost stirrup to stirrup with Ryba.

“The middle section of the road, down there.” Ryba pointed. “Right in the middle of the valley. You can see that there aren’t any trees to the south of the road, just mountain meadows sloping up to the base of the cliffs. It looks like a gradual incline, but it’s steeper than that. There’s a mass of rock ready to break loose on the side of the mesa. When it does, it will reach the road and still be a good ten yards high.”

How can she be so certain? “That much rock will make the road impassable.”

“Yes, it will.” Ryba could have been acknowledging that the sun would set every day.